


anchors.

by stydiapanic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Argent & Lydia Martin Friendship, F/M, Post-Episode: s03e24 The Divine Move, Stydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1399162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stydiapanic/pseuds/stydiapanic





	anchors.

They’re constantly waking each other up from nightmares.

For Lydia, it’s always about Allison. She sees Allison dying, screaming, shot somehow by one of her own arrows. She sees the light fading from Allison’s eyes, sometimes she’s reaching for Allison but she can never get to her before the darkness comes, she hears Allison’s laughter echoing around her before she sees herself, standing in front of a grave.

The worst ones aren’t even nightmares. It’s just her and Allison, sometimes they’re memories and sometimes they’re things they never got to do together that Lydia didn’t realize they wouldn’t have time to do. She dreams of them shopping for prom dresses, studying for midterms, going to parties. These dreams are muddled, mixed memories and desires, things they have already done but should still continue to do. These dreams are not nightmares. The nightmare is waking up. The nightmare is waking up not with a scream in her throat, but a smile on her face, in a dark room she wishes she wasn’t in, because that dark room belongs to the real world, the waking world, and that world no longer has Allison. The worst ones are the good ones, because they make her forget, and remembering makes her relive it every time.

Stiles usually wakes up screaming. But for him, remembering isn’t what brings him back. He doesn’t trust himself anymore. He doesn’t know what’s real. He used to think he did, and he thinks he’s recovered now, but he once _thought_ he was trapped in a basement. He can’t trust his thoughts anymore. And when he wakes up screaming, not even Lydia’s presence next to him is enough, because he’s never sure if it’s real, if it’s really happening this time. He dreamed her there with him once, too. He dreamed of waking up next to her in that same room in that same bed. Who’s to say he’s not just dreaming it again? He can’t rely on his surroundings for answers. When he wakes up screaming, he thinks it still isn’t over, he still can’t wake up, _she’s not really here, this is just another dream._ Lydia found out that he’d been dreaming of her the first night it happened, when he woke up startled and afraid, and she tried to tell him “Stiles, it’s okay, I’m here”, but he just kept saying “You’re always here, you’re always here, wake up, wake up, _wake up_ , you’re always here…”. On nights like those, Lydia wrapped her arms around him, laid his head on her shoulder, held his face in her hands and ran her thumbs over his cheekbones, _something_ to make him believe it, something to help him as he slowly understood, as he slowly came back to her. She’d hold him, in the early hours of the morning, the dead of night, she would hold onto him like he was the only constant, reliable thing in her life anymore. She would hold him and remember, remember everything that had happened to the both of them, and tried again to somehow convey to Stiles that it was all okay now, or rather, that nothing at all was entirely okay, but it was real, this was real, _she was real._ She told him all these things without speaking, through touches and the almost tangible emotion that hung in the air around them. She sat with Stiles as he recovered and began to recover herself. And it helped. He was in her arms, and he was awake, now a bittersweet feeling because he was no longer in danger, no longer _the_ danger, but he was here, he was with her, and he was okay now. He would be okay. Lydia was _here_ , this was _real_. And it helped. They stayed in each other’s arms, their presence, sharing and suffering and slowly, very slowly, recovering. They had each other. And it helped.


End file.
